True Grit Review

Much is being made of the dialogue.

How "period" it is and yet still relevant and funny.

How spectacular a job - particularly that of fourteen year old newcomer Haille Steinfeld - the actors do of rattling it off.

And what's most amazing - and this may be all due credit to the Coen brothers work - is that halfway into the film, the dialogue is still dated/unique/strange, and you don't notcie any longer. You get that sucked in. You're there.

That's the brilliance of the performances. Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Barry Pepper, the aforementioned Steinfeld - they make it so it is their world we are observing. Nothing is forced. It is 19th century Arkansas, and we are hearing and seeing the way people spoke, dressed, lived, etc.

One great line after another. Kind of ironic: you love one then another would top it and you'd forget.

But the one that stands out as of this writing, takes place near the end, during the final showdown. Bridges, as bad-ass U.S. marshall Rooster Cogburn, faces off against the bad guys. I guess the reason this line stuck was due to Bridges' performance.

He'd be a funny, drunk, sloppy, boorish, unkept mess.

Then, in the blink of an eye, when the situation called for it, the real man would emerge.

Violent, precise, deliberate, dangerous, deadly.

As one reviewer I read pointed it out, Cogburn's a drunk. But he doesn't drink then become violent, he drinks to supress the violence.

And near the end, when the big showdown between Rooster and the gang of bad guys takes place, Bridges' acting is beyond amazing.

They banter, talk tough, negotiate.

You can actually feel Cogburn warming up.

There's no fellas' looking each other in the eye with a steady gaze and yelling "draw!".

There's Bridges as Rooster Cogburn getting into his zone, deciding it's go-time.

He casually flicks away his hand rolled cigarette, and in his own version of 'en garde', gives a day-pass to the beast within.

FILL YER HAND YOU SUNAVABITCH!!!

And out come the pistols.

I wanted to see "The Fighter" again this weekend but my hometown theatre wasn't showing it.

They had True Grit, though.

I liked/appreciated/marvelled at it more upon second viewing.

Go.